Happy Birthday Primary

August 25th is the anniversary of the first primary meeting being held. I plan to do a birthday party for the Primary. This original idea was posted by The Crazy Chorister, who has endless ideas that I use very often!

I plan to decorate with balloons and streamers (left over from my 3 year old's birthday party last month!) and wear a party hat if I can find one.

My primary really needs to review I lived in Heaven. Like really. I was called in March and dove right in teaching My Eternal Family and really didn't do enough repeating/reinforcing of I Lived in Heaven and now we're getting close to the program and I realize they really don't know the 2nd or 3rd verse. So I am going to focus on each verse individually, plus How Firm a Foundation.

I'm going to play 4 party games:

1. Musical Chairs-have 4 chairs set up in the front with a song taped to each one (I'm doing each verse of ILIH individually and then HFAF by itself). Have 3 kids come up and circle the chairs while the pianist plays a fun song. When the music stops, they sit in the closest chair. Then we'll pick the song on the empty chair and sing it using my buzz/sing sign. If it happens to be the 2nd or 3rd verse of ILIH, I'll probably have them sing it a few times through in different fun ways so get the review in.

2. Pin the Bishop on the Church-(This is one I thought up, hope it works!) Before hand I'm going to use my sidewalk chalk to draw a scene on the blackboard of our church building: a chapel, parking lot, trees, people, etc. I have a 3 x 5 picture of our bishop that I intended to use for Father's Day, but never did. So I'm going to have a child come up, blind fold them, spin them around (I probably will only spin the sr. primary kids) and have them try to get the bishop right on the door of the church. With the 3 songs that are left from Musical Chairs, I'll have a child randomly pick one and then we'll sing that song a certain number of times, depending on how close they got the picture to the right spot. If it's right on the door, we'll sing it once. On the church, but not right on, twice. Outside the church somewhere, 3 times.

3. Hot Potato-I plan to set up their chairs in a circle for this entire activity. I did this for my pioneer day activity and they loved it. It's a nice change of scenery and makes it even more exciting. I'll have a child pick between the last 2 songs and toss a beanbag around while we sing that song. When the music stops, whoever has the beanbag will have to say the next line in the song (for Sr. primary I may have them say the preceeding line to make it harder). We may sing the song a couple times through if time permits. I love this idea because it will really make them focus on the words of the song.

4. For the last song that's left I plan to do different activities for my Jr. and Sr. primaries. I am going to do the Telephone game for my older kids. I'll start by whispering a line from the song to one child and let them pass it around and see how close it is to the original. Maybe even let a child choose a phrase to start and pass it around ending with me. They'd like that! Then we'll sing the song with that phrase inserted (granted it's not too crazy). I think that will be a little too advanced for my little ones so for Jr. Primary I'm just going to have a helium balloon and have them sing louder/softer as I raise/lower the balloon. Maybe even let a child control the balloon if time permits.

I'm excited for this one. Most of all, because it's not much prep for me and I think the kids will be excited about it.